I have often puzzled over the chain of connections that leads liberal Islamophobes to treat the hijab/niqab/burqa/'veil' as the first step in a sequence of associations whose culmination is terrorism. Whether it is an Observer scribe making, shall we say, inferential leaps concerning the relationship between such a garment and suicide attacks, or an open reactionary who supposes that the Human Rights Act is the first step toward Islamic law, there appears to be a set of unstated assumptions that urgently need to be explained. I have finally, I believe, hit on the answer. First of all, observe this educational slide show. The narration is supplied by Richard Burton, but as it is a silent presentation, you will just have to use your imagination.

Oh, I readily admit that I may not here have mastered the political morphology involved, but we can at least discern the missing contours of what until now has been an casually enthymematic body of, er, 'thought'. It seems that the 'veil' (in truth any garment that can be identified as specifically Muslim) contains a diabolical magic that converts nice liberal Western women into furiously repressed, militantly submissive maniacs. However, I thought a more general overview of the connections tacitly posited may be useful, so I threw this piece of shit together:

This is a road map to hell. Whichever route you take, you find yourself on the side of evil. This is, I might add, a pared down version of chart. I have excluded the route to Jimmy Saville's house, for instance. But you get the picture: arrows, squiggly lines, text boxes, and a big feckin circle, all add up to anti-Western naughtiness. Study it, learn it, and for heavens' sake stay resolute.